PEL Presents PvI#84: Interesting? w/ Lorraine Besser

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lorraine teaches at Middlebury college and has recently written The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. How does "the interesting" fit into human flourishing? How do we know when some attractive stimulation is really in our interest and really good?

Can we find something interesting even the most tedious, repetitive tasks? Is it interesting to start an improv scene by declaring that your scene-mates are dealing with alcoholism and divorce? Certainly it is rude. Also, Happiness 12 Step Programs.

Hear more at philosophyimprov.com. Support the podcast at philosophyimprov.com/support. Check out other Evergreen Podcast offerings.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is philosophy versus improv, where two sages try to teach each other a thing or two,
0:09.7	and maybe you, the audience, gets something out of it as well.
0:12.7	My name is Bill Arnett, an improv practitioner, but merely an acolyte of a philosophy.
0:19.2	My name is Mark Linsonmeyer.
0:22.8	I'm a philosophy practitioner, but merely a Andor, a rebels of improv. I don't know. It sounded like you're spitting out Star Wars shows there.
0:28.7	Our special guest, please introduce yourself and your book. Hi, yeah, I'm Lorraine Besser. I teach
0:33.4	philosophy at Middlebury College, and I have a new book out. It's called The Art of the Interesting, What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It.
0:42.1	What is your immediate question from that, Bill? What does that title tell you? So again,
0:46.4	what we miss in pursuit of the good life? Well, I guess there's a couple of things, define good life. And what we do in pursuit of it, you know, is the pursuit,
0:55.0	I guess. Right, right. But I'm going to presume you probably mean just the kind of typical American
1:00.4	dream and what we do and what what is the good life and what TikTok says is the good life.
1:05.2	And I would kind of concur that we do miss a lot in pursuit of that. Perhaps we are pursuing
1:10.8	what society says we should
1:12.6	pursue rather than what we, maybe our heart says we should pursue. Yeah. Okay. I think all of those
1:19.3	things are absolutely true, right? Like we get a lot of our ordinary conceptions of the good life
1:24.0	are really informed by our culture, our society, and what we're looking out
1:28.0	and trying to grasp from it. But one thing I do in the book is try to take our understandings
1:32.8	of the good life to kind of a deeper level. So when I'm thinking about the good life, I'm thinking
1:37.3	about a life full of valuable experiences. I call them like intrinsically valuable experiences,
1:44.0	experiences that are just good for us to
1:46.0	have. And the good life is full of those things. Love it. So we have a move on the one hand to some sort of
1:53.6	virtue ethics, right? Or is it some sort of expanded consequentialism? Oh. In other words,
	...

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